Graduates and young professionals – are your writing skills holding you back?

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed a real trend in the type of people contacting me for one-to-one coaching. They are 20-something professionals who are doing extremely well in their careers. They are talented, personable and articulate. However, their writing is letting them down, and this is something that comes up in their annual review.

Some of the people I have coached got in touch after being told to make their emails and letters more focused and less long-winded. Another needed to make her presentation slides less confusing. Several people I have worked with wrote in a rather stiff and formal way. One regularly wrote sentences that were over 40 words. Another just felt their copy lacked sparkle. Many of them also had problems with punctuation and grammar.

These are all issues that can, with the right coaching, be overcome fairly easily.

I am really flexible when it comes to coaching, but I usually suggest one of two options:

A one-off session.

We’ll identify the key issues and work on them in a half-day (four hour) session. I’ll look at some of your work before we meet up, to get a real understanding of the problems and to help me design an individual session. We’ll look at ways to improve your writing and there will be time to work on new or existing copy together. You might want to improve your writing in general, or focus on, for example, blog writing or press releases.

Price: varies according to location – examples are £260 plus VAT in Brighton or £285 plus VAT in London.

Two sessions plus homework

After the initial half day session, I’ll set you some “homework” which we’ll discuss by phone or email. We’ll have a follow-up session a few weeks or months down the line to fine-tune your writing skills and go over anything in more detail.